Matthew Arnold Quotes
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Sanity - that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.
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Why faintest thou! I wander’d till I died. Roam on! The light we sought is shining still. Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill, Our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside.
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Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel - below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed.
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Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar.
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We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through.
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All are before me! I behold The House, the Brotherhood austere! - And what am I, that I am here? For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom: What dost thou in this living tomb?
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The World in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love: Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy.
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Only, from the long line of spray
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Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself.
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Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, Returning home on summer-nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the punt’s rope chops round.
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Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask - Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.
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Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.
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Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings, By contemplation of diviner things.
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And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well - but ’tis not true!